Steeple Rocks - Kumbaya

Topic: Learning Music
Singing is a form of language that utilizes the same parts of the body. One’s vocal abilities are formed at the same time, because language is more than a collection of words bound together by grammar. The spoken word has a melodic range and arc, along with a cadence. It may be individuals begin to speak actual words [1] before they hum or sing syllables, [2] but at two months most are "capable of making all of the sounds of the vernacular," [3] plus a great many others "which, lacking social sanction, will never be crystallized into words." [4]

What matters most are infants’ exposure to sounds. Those who are taken into communal situations will hear more than those who are kept in the home. What they hear they accept, and possibly imitate.

The public places youngsters hear live music include concerts and churches. James Cleveland remembered, when he was young, his mother left him with his grandmother while she was working. The older woman took him to her choir rehearsals. [5] It was there, hearing Thomas Dorsey’s group in Chicago, that he absorbed the chorale aesthetics that formed the basis of his mature work.

Rehearsals are ideal places for the very young because people tend to be more tolerant than in concerts. A video of one by the Steeple Rocks choir in southwestern England in 2011 showed a mother with an infant girl. [6] You never saw more than the top of her head. From that you know she was old enough to sit in her mother’s lap, and young enough to get restive when she was not rocked.

What was not clear was if the woman deliberately moved to the rhythm of "Kumbaya" or if it was coincidence that she leaned to her left on the downbeats. The a capella choir emphasized harmony at the expense of other musical elements. Whatever emphasis syllables received came from the durations of the notes, not from the way they were articulated.

Even more important than the infant to the perpetuation of music in the community were the two middle-school-aged girls singing with the group of adults. They were not there because the arrangement required the special qualities of their voices, but because the group included men and woman on all ages.

In this particular selection, the group was more important than any individual. There were no solos. It was pure chordal harmony based on the Seeker’s recording. Each person was expected to blend into the whole. Unless you looked at the group, you would not know it contained at least five men or two young voices. The performance highlighted the voice, pure and simple, shorn of all individuality.

This style was derived from the modern revival of medieval and Renaissance music, which, in turn, drew on the English cathedral tradition. [7] The conductor of the Tallis Scholars told an interviewer, he had

"had a single sound in his head since he founded the group, ‘which I had got from listening to a mixture of choirs that were around at that time,’ he said, mentioning the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge and the Clerkes of Oxenford as two primary examples." [8]

It was "very clear and bright," and turned the choir into an instrument. [9] Gilbert Reaney argued there should be no vibrato or wavering, and "the tone of voice should be as smooth as the unvarying tone of a cornett." [10] Daniel Leech-Wilkinson went further, and said it was "abstract music, not expressive in any modern sense of the texts it set; it was characterized by clarity of harmony and texture." [11]

The words were clearly heard; it was still post-Reformation music. However, the variations in harmonic patterns were not tied to content. They did not occur between verses, but between lines within verses that repeated the same words.

In many ways it was a return to the time in an individual’s life when words had no concrete meanings, but were perceived as sounds that were associated with outcomes. That is, "ma ma" did not signify a particular person, but it brought the attention of that person. [12]

The young infant probably heard nothing to expand her repertoire, but the young girls learned other lessons. When they sang they were expected to stand erect and not move. Many in the front row dropped their arms and clasped their hands. The director, Adrienne Hale, also stood erect, using large gestures with her right hand to conduct. When she used both hands they moved symmetrically.

They had been well coached. While a few held music, there was no sign any turned pages. More important, everyone began together without anyone setting the pitch.

The choir was standing in a limestone Anglican church in the space in front of the pews and before the sanctuary. Hale did not exploit the acoustics of the building. She used sharp gestures to indicate everyone should end together, leaving no lingering sounds. A moment of silence marked the transition between verses.

Performers
Choir: I counted 20 adults, including at least five men, in addition to the two adolescent girls.

Conductor: Adrienne Hale
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: cum-BYE-ya, with no strong emphasis
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying

Vocabulary:
Pronoun: Someone
Term for Deity: Lord

Format: five verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: AxxxA
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Seekers
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic with variations in harmony

Harmonic Structure: major chords, with some minor ones in later repetitions

Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for "Lord" in the last line

Notes on Performance
Location: Anglican’s Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Steeple Ashton, Wilkshire, England.

Microphones: not used

Clothing: the choir members and director were dressed informally in slacks and tops.

Notes on Audience
Three people were visible in the audience, all sitting on the right side of the church. An older couple sat in front of the woman with the infant. None responded in any way to the music.

Notes on Performers
Hale studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and sang with the Scottish Opera [13] before moving to Bath in 2009 where she directed the City of Bath Bach Choir. [14] Since 2011 she had been teaching music in local schools and organizing choral groups. She formally organized Steeple Rocks in 2012, but this video was uploaded in December 2011. The amateur group met once a week. [15]

Availability
YouTube: uploaded by choirconductor99, 17 December 2011.

End Notes
1. Arnold Gesell and Helen Thompson. Infant Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1934. He suggested "sixty-seven per cent of the children at 52 weeks and 86 per cent at 56 weeks uttered two words." He also noted another researcher found children of professionals had larger vocabularies. 251.

2. Gesell observed humming at 18 months. 254.

3. Gesell. 251.

4. Gesell. 288-289.

5. Kathryn B. Kemp. "Cleveland, James." American National Biography Online website.

6. I am assuming the infant was a girl because it was wearing a pink knit cap and what looked like a pink blanket was spread on the back of a pew across the aisle.

7. Todd M. McComb. "Medieval Perspectives: Sounds of Voices." Medieval Music and Arts Foundation website. 28 August 2001; last updated 16 August 2004.

8. Stephen Raskauskas. "The Secrets to Heavenly Singing from Peter Phillips, Conductor and Founder of the Tallis Scholars." WFMT-radio Chicago website, 5 April 2016.

9. Raskauskas.

10. Gilbert Reaney. Quoted by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson. The Modern Invention of Medieval Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 131

11. Leech-Wilkinson. 131.

12. Gesell said the infant "comprehends movements before he comprehends words and we may suppose that in their nascent stages the word-sounds are closely bound up with a system of motor predispositions or anticipations. The words do not have a distinct and mobile status in his mental life. They are moored in his postural and manipulatory reaction system. Accordingly he comprehends many words before he masters their utterance and, even after he learns to speak them, it may be years before the words attain a high degree of detached autonomy in his thinking." 253.

13. "Angel Fish." Purple Fish Band website.

14. Wikipedia. "City of Bath Bach Choir."

15. Steeple Rocks Choir website.